Santiago, Chile

 The new UGO hotel by P. Morelli and J. G. Alemparte of A + M Arquitectos is considered an architectural piece that effectively contributes to the provision of services around the axis and area of positive influence imposed by line 1 of the Santiago Metro. 

The district of Providencia has characterized its densification process over the last 50 years with a balanced urban vision in terms of its character as a garden city. 

Its building model consists mostly of isolated towers with varying heights depending on the degrees of densification in accordance with the offer of public goods, roads, and public transport that the district provides to the citizen. 

The building is modeled as an architectural form based on two border conditions, the building standard that defines the local regulatory plan for the sector, and the geometry of the site. 

UGO Hotel has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

In this sense, a site in a “Cul-de-sac” condition with a front of 22 meters towards Holanda Street, and a depth of 40 meters, foreshadows the volumetric composition of a horizontal 5-level bar connected to a 10-level tower with a 45 x 45 meters square plan. 

In this way and taking the regulations to their maximum possibilities of height, land occupation, and constructibility, it was chosen to travel parallel to the bar to reach the tower as the end of the exterior route. 

This main body on its first level gives rise to the entrance lobby of a business and tourism hotel with 180 rooms in the superior 3-star format. 

The lobby is configured on two relevant architectural operations: the first being to liberate as much as possible the supporting structure of the plan, both in the center and in the perimeter, achieving total transparency in the east-west direction and highlighting the quality of the garden city, characteristic of the district. 

The second operation was to empty the center of the room floors with a patio of light to which the corridors of the rooms concur. 

The transparency, the lightness of the structure, and the height of the first level allow for the location of the most public and noble hotel programs—such as Front-Desk, lobby-receipts, bar, and lounge-cafeteria—in a free and mixed disposition. 

All these programs correlate with the exterior terrace next to the pool producing an interior-exterior continuity and blurring the limits of the built and the void. 

The vertical core of circulations and facilities moves toward the north side of the green square, flanking the void at the entire height of the tower. 

The lobby is related to the program of meeting rooms (and convention center) through a gallery on the first level under the south side of the bar, taking in natural light from the entrance patio of the hotel. 

The envelope of the bar and the tower are designed with high degrees of opacity, confining the fenestrations to the correct entry of natural light into the rooms, in an alternation of the “vibrato” of the openings in the façade.

This achieves a good performance in terms of energy conservation, solar radiation, and atmospheric reflection, which are characteristic of Chile’s latitude.

Project: UGO Hotel
Architects: A + M Arquitectos
Lead Architects: P. Morelli and J. G. Alemparte
General Contractor: Emm Constructora 
Client: Ugo Hoteles SpA 
Photographers: Marcos Mendizaba